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Three products from Imceda that should be in every SQL Server DBA's toolbox

Imceda Software, provider of database administration and development products, has released the next version of two of its products and has a third in beta. LiteSpeed 2005 for SQL is a backup and recovery solution for Microsoft SQL Server, Speed Coefficient profiles the SQL activity on MS SQL Server 7.0 and 2000 databases and their newest offering, SQL Audit, will capture and log all SQL statements that touch the database.

LiteSpeed 2005, released last November, has a number of features that are unique to the industry, including Adaptive Compression, Command Line Substitution and Dynamic Distribution. Imceda states that LiteSpeed 2005 breaks backup and recovery records and that it can back up one terabyte of data in less than an hour--in 30 minutes if it is configured properly. LiteSpeed integrates with existing infrastructures seamlessly, does not require proprietary hardware or applications and is fully programmable.

There are eleven compression levels in LiteSpeed, providing the ability to compress backup files up to 95%. Six embedded encryption levels provide added security, but if this is not enough, the program allows the users to add custom encryption algorithms.

LiteSpeed provides object level recovery from its own files as well as object level recovery from a native Microsoft backup file. "Users can browse through native backup files to recover an individual object--something they cannot do with the Microsoft product," said Walter Scott, CEO of Imceda. He went on to say, "We're reaching the ability now to go into a backup file and recover just the information you're concerned about, which could save people hours or days."

The new graphical user interface provides complete control of the backup process giving users the ability to check for failed backups across an enterprise, or look for files that have not backed up in a specified amount of time.

Command Substitution should be a popular feature among new users. It allows LiteSpeed to see Native SQL Server backup commands and converts them to LiteSpeed backup commands automatically. The customer does not need to make changes to backup processes or scripts.

Imceda has added integration with Tivoli for Storage Manager (TSM) and is the only vendor to offer support for SQL Server 2005.

LiteSpeed 2005, released in Japan on January 6, 2005 was well received, and Imceda plans to expand its offering to include Spanish, French, German and Italian. In addition, LiteSpeed for Oracle, UDB and Exchange are in beta and support for Sybase, MySQL and Sharepoint are in development.

The second offering in Imceda's threesome is Speed Coefficient 2.0, an extension to Profiler with the ability to identify the source of performance issues for SQL Server and intelligently report what the Profiler data represents. Based on Precise, Speed Coefficient has a simplified GUI and is easy to install. All traces running on the server are displayed on the new Trace Activity screen where trace parameters can be examined, paused, started and stopped. Concurrent traces against the same or different databases can be run since the trace and analysis functions are stored in a shared work database. Speed Coefficient reports use XML to display dynamic tables allowing the DBA to easily sort results, copy cell information and expand tables.

Additional features include new performance overview reports, CPU analysis reporting, real-time transaction analysis, support for SQL Server 7 and 2000, stored procedure trace and analysis wizards and many other custom report options.

A third product, still in Beta, is SQL Audit. SQL Audit captures every SQL statement that touches the database and logs it to a repository. The product will report on such things as user activity or who touched a database outside of the department that is responsible for that database.

Founded in Austrailia in 1999 Imceda Software moved the corporate headquarters to Burlington, Massachusetts in January of 2004. For additional information please visit http://www.imceda.com.